It still surprises me how many people don’t know about Wikipedia. Whether it be research for your math/english/history paper, or looking up some obscure Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book/Anime/Manga term, they have it all.
In case you didn’t know, the wiki in Wikipedia is a term referring to a website where any random visitor can edit almost any page. Surprisingly, peer pressure and the dedication of other users keep trouble to a minimum. Since wikis keep a history of changes, and damage is easy to undo. Wikipedia’s stated policies concerning referencing sources and the peer review do the rest. I know this may sound unreliable, but don’t dismiss it before you try it.
I like to wander around Wikipedia when I get the free time and in fact, one of my future projects is a script to dynamically build a “My Home” page containing Wikipedia’s Entry of the Day as well as numerous Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, and Puzzle of the Day entries from around the web. Sort of a daily dose of genius. I’ll post it here when it’s done.
What specific benefits do I get from Wikipedia? Well, it helps me keep my trivia edge (I have always excelled at knowing the most pointless facts about anything other than sports or pop culture, my two least favorite areas) and, Sci-fi fan that I am, I did not know what unobtainium or Clanking Replicators were before wandering Wikipedia.
On a parting note, I should warn readers that Wikipedia may be a little slow lately, they’ve been experiencing a massive growth in popularity. In response, they are running a fundraising drive and have already raised 85% of their goal as of this posting.
Wikipedia by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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